Bandipur

The little town of Bandipur is a string of jewels along a ridge between Pokhara and Kathmandu. Like a living museum it exhibits the attractive style of Newari architecture and is also a bustling town seemingly populated more by children than adults, as it is also home to the long-standing Notre-Dame school where kids flock to for their education. I stayed only a couple days, but wish I could have hung around longer, just sitting on the side of the slate-cobbled road sipping chai and watching the activity.



Made this drawing from the troof top of a derelict building at the end of the main street in Bandipur. The sun was setting and it was beautiful. The building is kind of an example of Newari architecture which seems to use slate tiles for the roof, rough brick and stone walls, dark doors and wooden frames often ornately carved, and especially the wooden struts under the eaves, though not featured here except as support under the balcony. Bandipur is a living museum of these buildings and I gathered it is trying to stay that way, though I wonder what will become of it as more tourists discover this little gem in the hills.


On the first night there, a festival was held with a clamour of drums and cymbals and a straw effigy was burned and thrown from a cliff. Apparently it's been going on for 500 years since a man, some progressive type, so described, was executed for his ideas, or it's Ghanta Karna the enemy of Vishnu, I don't know. People weren't that interested, it seemed. But it was a spectacle.



Nearby is Siddha cave, said to be the largest cave in Nepal. I went with Sebasitan a Finnish fellow I met, but we found our flashlights to be all but inadequate for the 35 meter caverns inside, and also just a little scared off by the bats flittering past our ears. So we didn't make it far. But later I came across a cave guide, and though I've come to really avoid "guides", the opportunity to explore the cave in it's totality was intriguing. So he took me deep into the cave where it was darker than night and cool and smelled of ancient guano and minerals, where without a torch it might be impossible to find an exit, and your voice comes back to you in echo rather than escape to the daylight.




Siddha Cave: 427M scrambling over rocks and through gorges into cavernous 30M ampitheaters, all under earth, creaking with bats and drip dripping drops through ancient cracks, eerie and infinitely remote, dark echoing, otherworldly underworld.